Roberts Space Industries has a letter from Chairman Chris Roberts offering
thanks to backers who have now pledged $17 million to fund Star Citizen,
the upcoming Wing Commander-inspired space game. This includes word on their $19
million stretch goal:

I would like to extend my most heartfelt thanks to
each and every one of you! We just hit $17 million at slightly past 12am PST
August 31 2013 – less than seven days after we hit $16M!!! The power of this
community is simply amazing!

We still have a ways to go before we have achieved the goal of being completely
community funded but based on our current trajectory we’re going to make it –
maybe even by the end of this year! Which will be another amazing milestone that
will have been set by this community. The enthusiasm and support the development
team and I have felt is amazing and makes us even more determined to make the
best damn space sim ever! (BDSSE!)

The $17 million mark unlocks a special ship upgrade pack for every pledger who
has donated prior to this point. An engine modifier will be added to your
account shortly and in the near future you should be able to see it in your
hangar! You also unlocked an additional flyable ship class in the finished game:
the massive battlecruiser!

This accomplishment means that it’s time to reveal the $19 million stretch
goals. Without further ado:

$19 million

Know your foe with a Jane’s Fighting Ships style
manual free in PDF form to all pledgers.

Manage Space Stations – Players will compete to
own and operate a limited number of space stations across the galaxy.

That would be because last time a bunch of people tried, Blizzard sued them for breaking the ToS that forbids that and got close to a $100 million judgement.

Dude, first WoW was just an example. The point was to make it clear that there are unofficial servers/emulators for just about every MMO out there and that barely anyone plays on such servers. Secondly, are you telling me that if I enter "wow emu" in Google and I get over 1 million results that there are no more efforts to run unofficial WoW servers? Please. I'm not going to check out which of these projects are actually "promising" since I don't give a fuck about WoW but it is very clear that there are a great many efforts, possibly even working ones, to emulate the WoW environment for free play. Blizzard can go fuck themselves and their lawyers if the guys running an emu have a clue how to "hide" properly.

Cutter wrote on Sep 2, 2013, 14:45:And from that Joystick Interview later on....

Star Citizen's original vision has expanded as its community has grown, with stretch goals adding to the workload and the overall vision. "The full game that I want to build that was in my head was always like $20 million ... or 21 or 22. It's in that range," Roberts says. "That's kind of what we're shooting for, right now."

So now it's more like $22 million...for the moment....

And? If required he'll shake $2 million out of investors. If not (more likely given the perpetual influx of money) the additional $2 million will come from the community. If the funding continues like this then the game will be easily beyond $22 million in late 2014.The budget is naturally very dynamic anyway. There's squadron 42, there's the persistent universe and there is a ton of stuff in the pipeline already for post-launch updates. Star Citizen will also have a smooth launch, rather than a hard launch. Roberts is planning on moving from beta (or one certain pre-final beta build) to live without a wipe so there is no real set in stone release date. It is all pretty fluid and organic. You can't really make a cut and nail the budget as being $21,753,951.

Uh huh, yeah, not being evasive at all. Care to show us anywhere it's printed in black and white what the specifics are for the SP game, private MP servers - if any, and the MMO portion of the game.

You need to watch the weekly live cast (Wingman's Hangar) more often and read the "Ask A Dev" section at the official forums more often, too. Stuff is getting revealed all of the time. Many details are still in limbo, of course, and subject to change but as far as the single player is concerned, for example, the Lead Designer Rob Irving put it in very simple terms when he said that anyone who has played a CR game before should know what to expect. He added that they don't have any plans to reinvent the wheel. So for squadron 42 -> Wing Commander. It will be a military campaign space soap opera where you begin as a fledgling UEE recruit earning your first wings. The campaign will be a branching one. In the end you will exit the military as a "Citizen" and you can take that character to the persistent universe to keep playing.

I mean if selling ships in the $100s and $1000s is just something anyone can do at any time for free in an SP game or private MP game then what's the incentive for people to buy in the MMO portion of the game? The only reason I can possibly think of is that they have a distinct advantage.

Why doesn't everyone play on free private WoW servers? Right. People prefer to play on official servers where you get guaranteed regular content updates, where the real competitive play takes place, where (ideally) you have to deal with less lag, less connection issues, less bugs, hopefully effective exploit and cheat prevention, stricter moderation, timely customer support and many other benefits that come from a commercial operation.What you can do with the private PU server/client is set up your Freelancer-/Privateer-style sandbox and of course you could mod the thing so you'd have the best ships from the start etc. but where is the fun in that?

There certainly is a theoretical risk for CIG though if a really well organized group of people gets together and uses the private PU plus the mod tools to create something totally awesome like a X-Wing vs. TIE remake or a Star Wars PU .But people will still have to buy the game to be able to play a modded version so CIG still wins.

Seems like the people who'll be able to capture and control star bases/sectors will need the best equipment. It'll take forever to grind it, so you'll have to buy it.

That remains to be seen. CR has stated repeatedly that he loathes grindy MMO gameplay so it's unlikely that you will have to grind in the traditional MMO sense in SC. It may be difficult and challenging to come by certain stuff though like e.g. maybe a certain type of weapon requires you to operate deep behind enemy lines in Vanduul (alien race) territory or it's hidden away on an asteroid base run by pirates. Stuff like that.

So, show us on the RSI website where all this is broken down into specifics about what's what. I've gone through their entire About the Game and all I see is a lot of marketing fluff and nothing concrete except that the game is being setup to ensure people will keep spending real money.

Yep. The website is in dire need of updates. As I stated above the best way to keep up with SC right now is to watch the weekly Wingman's Hangar and read the Ask A Dev section at the forums. Every dev is "forced" by CR to dedicate one hour per week to answering fan questions so there's lots of info in there on coding, art, design... everything.

Anyone who can't just come out and say things directly is someone not to be trusted. In other words, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. And a bunch of people are going to learn this the hard way. Won't be surprised in the least if we eventually see several class-action suits surrounding this game.

CR is a very honest and direct person. With that said he certainly seems to have a habit of being way too ambitious for his own good (Freelancer debacle anyone?). I don't see any way how they are going to release squadron 42, the MMO, the mod tools and the private server with only half of the promised features in late 2014 or even in the first half of 2015. My guess is that they might make a Q1/2015 target for S42 only. Then the PU might follow a year later with initially not nearly the 100 star systems that have been promised and then it will take them months and years to actually add all of the features that have been talked about.CR is keeping it intentionally vague what will be in the initial release because I think he very well knows that there is no chance they'll have all of it ready by late 2014.

With the high and growing budget and the extremely high expectations I would personally advise CR to sober up, step on his soapbox and reveal a somewhat realistic schedule for the initial release and subsequent updates and which features will be in at launch and what will come later. Set people's expectations straight. It's going to be a massacre if only a stripped down S42 beta is ready for prime time in late 2014.The hangar is already a minor massacre because most people are too retarded to understand the concept of a pre-alpha. CR needs to proactively go out there and tell it like it is.

gray wrote on Sep 2, 2013, 08:53:“We have private funding (not publisher funding). The crowd funding side helps to determine how ambitious we can be upfront. The overall game wont cost $20M upfront, but probably by the end of the first year of public release we will have spent that much between the original game and the ongoing content that year”

This has since become a target for full crowdfunding.

So again, by evidence of this quote $20M is the first major goal. Doesn't say anything about stopping there, quite the opposite in fact.

And from that Joystick Interview later on....

Star Citizen's original vision has expanded as its community has grown, with stretch goals adding to the workload and the overall vision. "The full game that I want to build that was in my head was always like $20 million ... or 21 or 22. It's in that range," Roberts says. "That's kind of what we're shooting for, right now."

So now it's more like $22 million...for the moment....

Uh huh, yeah, not being evasive at all. Care to show us anywhere it's printed in black and white what the specifics are for the SP game, private MP servers - if any, and the MMO portion of the game. I mean if selling ships in the $100s and $1000s is just something anyone can do at any time for free in an SP game or private MP game then what's the incentive for people to buy in the MMO portion of the game? The only reason I can possibly think of is that they have a distinct advantage.

Seems like the people who'll be able to capture and control star bases/sectors will need the best equipment. It'll take forever to grind it, so you'll have to buy it. So, show us on the RSI website where all this is broken down into specifics about what's what. I've gone through their entire About the Game and all I see is a lot of marketing fluff and nothing concrete except that the game is being setup to ensure people will keep spending real money.

Anyone who can't just come out and say things directly is someone not to be trusted. In other words, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. And a bunch of people are going to learn this the hard way. Won't be surprised in the least if we eventually see several class-action suits surrounding this game.

“That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!”

beaves wrote on Sep 1, 2013, 13:43:Is this the definition of 'feature creep' ?

If only we had more money then we could add _________.

No, they stopped adding new features after 13 or 14 million.

Creston wrote on Sep 1, 2013, 15:03:So, odds on the price for that battle cruiser? $5000?

Nothing bigger than Idris will be available to buy in crowdfunding. And Idris is now $5k.

Cutter wrote on Sep 1, 2013, 21:03:And what happened to this private funding he had secured? What was it? 10 million he claimed? Well what's their end? You don't just secure funding then turn around and say you don't need it after the agreements have been signed.

10 million was supposed to be given to him if he would be able to get 2 million from crowd. He got 6 and decided to do it fully crowdfunded.

Cutter wrote on Sep 1, 2013, 21:03:And Aero, you're correct. This is why so many of us won't go in on this. They've been very evasive from day one. You can't get a straight answer from them. Just them always asking for more and more money all the time. And where did he say 20 million was the final goal?

dang! i upgraded to digital freelancer awhile back, all said im in $110 on that (+ $30 more from my initial KS pledge, gave my brother a key). love the ship, looks great in the hangar.

realized i want a hornet... dangit it is a $110 ship too... i currently cant justify going in that far. i think the hornet will be the ship used in squadron 42, since in its bio it says this is the fighter ship of the bengal carriers.

also seen some talk about the corvette... i think you can still get it in the $5000 package deal and its not a limited number.

maybe the talk was about the carrier, dunno whatever.

finally, noticed an article about a recent KS, nothing that the SOTS ground pounders KS is live.

freelancer (digital anvil) was roberts game, and intended as a mmo, roberts left game and it rushed to retail missing features, but a complete game.

freelancer you could single player campaign (ie squadron 42). campaign was sequential but the whole universe was there sandbox style.

co-op/multi, you ran a 3mb server app and connected to it, the universe is there complete, but the main campaign quests were gone. all the side quests (taken in station bars, we have seen these in the SC artwork, same thing) were there, trade was there.

this is it folks. difference being SC will have the persistent universe to connect to that was cut from freelancer.

probably cut from concerns over cost. makes sense roberts would add the shop and all that.

gray wrote on Sep 2, 2013, 08:53:Chris Roberts has always said at $20m it would be completely crowd funded and he would prefer to go this route as to not be beholden to private investors.

By then it will be too late to change all this MMO, P2W stuff. I'm convinced this heavy focus on all that was initially coerced by the funding source, since things like F2P and P2W are hot in private funding right now.

It'll be interesting to see how Cryengine holds up with this. Concerns about it not being capable of large scale Space environments are probably down to Crytech being incapable of producing a game interesting enough to take advantage of their own engine..

Cutter wrote on Sep 1, 2013, 21:03:And what happened to this private funding he had secured? What was it? 10 million he claimed? Well what's their end? You don't just secure funding then turn around and say you don't need it after the agreements have been signed.

And Aero, you're correct. This is why so many of us won't go in on this. They've been very evasive from day one. You can't get a straight answer from them. Just them always asking for more and more money all the time. And where did he say 20 million was the final goal? Ahis says they still have a ways to go. That sounds like a lot more than just another 3 million at this point.

This is just nonsense.

Chris Roberts has always said at $20m it would be completely crowd funded and he would prefer to go this route as to not be beholden to private investors. If needed he has an agreement in principle from other funding sources otherwise known as;

From the 2012 AMA, note the Kickstarter was for a modest $2m the rest was going to be privately funded;

“We have private funding (not publisher funding). The crowd funding side helps to determine how ambitious we can be upfront. The overall game wont cost $20M upfront, but probably by the end of the first year of public release we will have spent that much between the original game and the ongoing content that year”